Crafty Bastards

It has been a long time since I bought a paperback or hardback book. I'm pretty sure I'm still buying at least as many books as I always have, probably more. As a regular commuter and someone that always has several books on the go, I'm grateful my rucksack isn't close to being as heavy as it was the last two decades. Likewise, holidays don't require checking-in a suitcase containing shorts, flip-flops, t-shirts and 28 kilos of books.

Don't get me wrong. I love the page to page physical interaction with paper books. Equally I don't find reading from a screen detrimental to the reading experience. Typically I'll read on the iPad when I'm indoors or commuting and on my Kindle device if I'm outside or on holiday - simply because the Kindle is smaller and the screen doesn't reflect light. My immersion in digital reading is all about practicalities.

As a writer and publisher of both paperback and digital books I have mixed feelings. There is absolutely nothing like holding a book you have written in your hands. It is a feeling I admit I don't get from holding a Kindle with my book on it. That's not to say it isn't a great feeling. Just nothing like holding the real thing. The trouble is I sell one hundred digital books for every one paperback. Selling digital books and how to price them has been the subject of much conversation in the press and within the publishing industry. Both among commercial and independent publishers like me. The commercial publishing industry seems desperate to retain the pricing paper based books give them, or at least to find some leverage to make money in the digital age.

Anyone that has spent just a little time reading what I write here, will know I hold Lee Child in very high regard. I'm thankfully now over my 'I want to write like Lee Child' phase - I realised I needed to write like me. Lee Child is one of the most successful commercial authors at this time. His next Reacher book - A Wanted Man, is scheduled for release Aug 30 and is currently (June) in the Amazon top #100 book charts. That's not just in fiction, that's across all book genres including non-fiction.

Every year I pre-order the next Reacher book, usually when it appears on Amazon. The last time I bought a Reacher novel anywhere other than Amazon was about 2007. Before I wrote this post I was looking at the Amazon page for A Wanted Man, and like I did in my post on Kindle pricing, I pondered the £10 price-tag for the Kindle edition. It's only £1.50 cheaper than the hardback. The pricing is unusually high even from a commercial publisher with a popular author. While deliberating the high Kindle price I got to thinking how much I used to love looking at my collection of Reacher hardbacks on my bookshelf. About thirty seconds after that I got to thinking I might as well buy the hardback as I'll read it so quickly it's bulk won't be much of an issue. I'll also be able to swing around in my chair and admire the hardback on the shelf, sometimes maybe even pull it out and flick through the pages - as I'm prone to do if I'm searching for inspiration. I'd probably get the Kindle edition anyway for reference and portability when the pricing comes down to paperback levels. Then I got to thinking how clever that was - that I'd pay top dollar for the hardback and then pay again for the convenience of Kindle. Crafty bastards, I thought.